Many companies and other organizations operate distributed systems that interconnect numerous computing systems and other computing resources to support their operations, such as with the computing systems being co-located (e.g., as part of a local network) or instead located in multiple distinct geographical locations (e.g., connected via one or more private or public intermediate networks). For example, data centers housing significant numbers of interconnected computing systems have become commonplace, such as private data centers that are operated by and on behalf of a single organization and public data centers that are operated by entities as businesses to provide computing resources to customers. As the scale and scope of typical distributed systems has increased, the tasks of provisioning, administering, and managing the computing resources have become increasingly complicated.
Such a distributed system may encompass numerous subsystems that work in concert. For example, a distributed system operated by an online store may include an ordering system that processes customer orders of goods and/or services. When an order is placed or modified, numerous services, processes, or subsystems may be invoked to perform various operations related to the order. For example, the payment type may be verified, the delivery address may be verified, the inventory may be updated, and so on. Such operations may be implemented using multiple service instances or other computing resources, and the operations may be performed according to configurations that control runtime behavior. However, configurations may change over time, and improperly deployed configuration changes may cause service outages that impact the entire ordering system.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning “having the potential to”), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning “must”). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean “including, but not limited to.”